Late-Week Lamentations

Lots to cover and a hard stop, so why are we wasting time on pleasantries?

The Mighty Ducks - A great couple of weeks of watching the youngsters carry their bags, rake their bunkers and play aggressive golf under trying conditions.  And both titles found their way to the Pacific Northwest.  First, Jay Coffin:

Drama was oozing from both sides. 

Then they played the matches. 

Fast forward to the end, because that’s truly all that mattered on this day. With the matches tied 2-2, the championship was decided by a PGA Tour winner’s son (Texas sophomore Taylor Funk, Fred’s son) and a man who grew up in Eugene (Oregon junior Sulman Raza), the two playing in front of hundreds of Ducks fans hanging on every swing. 

Then that match went three extra holes. 

You can’t make this stuff up.

The good news is that you don't have to.... First, how great for Casey Martin to deliver in his hometown....

And how about this timely snark from that Shack guy:

No one deserved to lose! 

Such a dreaded cliche but so appropriate in the case of Oregon vs. Texas at Eugene Country Club, with two great teams and two of the best coaches on the planet reminding us for the 49,721st time that team match play golf is just a bigger, better beast. 

So glad we kept it out of the Olympic Games.

 Geoff, time to move on... the Olympics will be great.  Or not....

A word on the classy Texas team, who showed good stuff in almost overcoming the loss of their best-known player:

Playing the host Ducks on essentially Oregon’s home golf course, Eugene Country Club, in front of a dramatically pro-Oregon crowd, the top-ranked and top-seeded Longhorns, both surprisingly and not surprisingly, were the underdogs. And that was before word surfaced that junior Beau Hossler would have to forfeit his match because of a left-shoulder injury. 

Hossler, who injured the shoulder Tuesday during his semifinal match against USC’s Andrew Levitt but fought back to earn the winning point to send Texas to the final, was scheduled to play Oregon senior Zach Foushee. Instead, Hossler was relegated to cheerleader, and his withdrawal gave crowd-favorite Oregon the early advantage.

“I have a lot of confidence in our guys,” Hossler said before the match. “They have a lot of guts.” 

He was right. Led by a trio of sophomores, the Longhorns nearly pulled off the man-down win.

And this says it all from Texas coach John Fields:

“You work really hard as a coach and for these players, you come with a dream that someday maybe you can do something special like this. For them [Oregon] to do it with their home crowd here is magnificent. It is good for college golf. It’s good for everybody concerned, but not us right now, because it is stinging. It will be tough for our guys. But that is what it is all about. You’ve got to keep getting better.”

Good stuff all around.

Into The Clear -  I'm uncertain as to how to handle yesterday's Finchem press availability on the event formerly known as the WGC Cadillac, which Shack Fisked in epic fashion here.  Like Geoff, let's start with the money quote that will make the rounds of the cable networks:

Donald Trump is a brand, a big brand, and when you're asking a company to invest millions of dollars in branding a tournament and they're going to share that brand with the host, it's a difficult conversation.

That's no doubt true at some level, but this clarification from Shack confirms that things aren't always exactly as they seem:

Interestingly, my sources say sponsor Cadillac wanted to return to Doral but not at WGC prices. Tim Rosaforte reported something similar.

With our Commish, it's always about the Benjamins...That seem harsh?  

As we anticipated, some of the reaction revolves around the feeling that somehow this is a political exercise, and it is not that in any way, shape, or form. It is fundamentally a sponsorship issue. We are a conservative organization. We value dollars for our players. We have a strong sense of fiduciary responsibility. So we make decisions that are in the best interests of our players, short term and long term.

That certainly makes me feel better that he's not allowing politics to impinge on the purity of his WGC money-grab.... And let me share a couple of Shack's best.... errr...let's go with clarifications:

The decision made here was based on the reality that we were not able to secure sponsorship for next year's WGC at Doral or for out years for that matter. At the same time, we had an opportunity to build what we think is going to be a spectacular event in an area that is strategically important to the growth of the sport and the activity of the PGA Tour that has been focused in South America and Central America for the last good number of years. 

Psssst...Timmy, Mexico City is in North America. But go on...

And this:

When Donald Trump purchased the property, he called me and asked whether I felt that it was necessary to do much with the golf course, and that led to a discussion that led to an indication that, if he wanted to work on the golf course, our recommendation would be to use Gill Hanse as the external architect and our own staff internally to do the work, which is what ensued and led to the product we have now, which we're very comfortable with. 

I don't know about you, but talking the "product" in Tony Montana's old stomping grounds seems a bit shady.

But what gets really confusing is that he uses "the product" for the golf course and "property" for the event:

We are keen on coming back to Doral.

We need to find the right property to resume our long-term involvement in the community.

We're proud of being there for over 50 years, and we'd like to come back. We have looked at certain kinds of properties that might work on our schedule, and we'll continue to do so with an eye toward bringing sponsorship, appropriate sponsorship, to whichever property we decide upon.

We explained all this yesterday to Donald in New York.

Which made him go public before you had finalized arrangements, making you look like a hack.  And by arrangements I mean little details such as where they're going to tee it up:

Q. Tim, can you say what kind of options you have for courses down there?

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: We started off looking at a handful. We narrowed it down to two. We're focused on one, and we would hope to announce the details of that pretty soon, but we don't want to announce it until the Is are dotted and the Ts are crossed on the agreement.

As long as you're focused....Now The Donald isn't everybody's taste, of course, but we naturally assume that he's found an impeccable partner (with bonus Shack snark):

Q. Tim, could you give us a sense of perspective on Ricardo Salinas in terms of his wealth, his commitment or spirit to the game, and also what he says as his vision for this tournament? 

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, when we contacted us well over -- or almost a year ago, their whole focus from day one, it's a very significant group of companies. And we have a couple of companies that we do business with that do a lot of business with them. We have a couple of CEOs we know very well here in the United States that do a lot of business with them. So we were able, after these initial conversations, to vet them quite thoroughly. 

The thing that struck us from day one was that their overriding reason to become involved was, in fact, not the brand exercise, advertising, the standard things. It was to build golf in Mexico. They had taken notice of The First Tee program, showed a lot of interest in that, and part of this agreement is they will underwrite the cost of a significant First Tee type program in Mexico City, which will be a very interesting thing to watch and see how it works.

Ahhh...the thermal exhaust port in Darth Timmy's Deathstar, aka The First Tee.

Well, he certainly sounds like a solid citizen, and as long as he's willing to pay for his share of that wall... What, oh that's nothing:

Q. Well, in light of that, Mr. Salinas of Grupo Salinas, had a run-in with the SEC about 10 or 11 years ago. It wasn't insider training, but self-dealing. He made a profit of $109 million. He wound up not admitting guilt, but he paid a $7.5 million charge. Obviously, you guys vetted that. Can you talk about, in light of the Phil thing, here's a guy that he was barred from holding office of a U.S. public listed corporation for five years. Could you discuss his history?

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Yeah, we did, and we concluded that, given all the facts, it should not be something that would preclude us to do this particular transaction and all of its elements.

What, El Chappo isn't a First Tee kind of guy?  You have to admit that the Phil thing makes this a just a wee bit awkward, though I credit Nurse Ratched for his candid responses to these questions:

Q. If I could quickly shift gears for a quick second. There's that portion in your handbook about players not associating with people that could bring adversity to the game and reflect badly on the game. You had Mickelson being named as a relief defendant in the insider training indictment. Have you spoken with Mickelson? What do you plan to do in that regard? 

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: I have not spoken to him, but I have no comment about anything else at this point in time. 

Q. Tim, to follow what you may or may not have a comment on, Billy Walters has been involved in at least one PGA Tour event in the Pro-Am. What are the lessons that you will take from this situation moving forward? 

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: That's a very good question, but I'm not going to answer it today.

That's a very good question, but FU!

I don't know enough to know whether Salinas' brush with the SEC should be disqualifying, but one doesn't get the sense that Timmy has particularly high standards in this regard...  But believe it or not, it gets worse:

Q. Tim, a couple players who have been to Mexico City just said they think it will present some security challenges. How big a concern is that?

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, we'd like to think that, for a good number of years now, we take the cautious view, regardless of where we're playing around the planet, you have some areas are more prone to terrorism and other places that are more prone to theft, and some places where you have people being kidnapped in very dangerous parts of the world. But like every other country, Mexico has dangerous areas and nondangerous areas. Obviously, we have some in the United States.

Don't you just love that bit of moral relativism?  Because the U.S. is just like Mexico..... But in a tasty morsel of cosmic irony, it reminds me so much of this comment about Vladimir Putin's killing of journalists:

“Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also"

The speaker? That would of course be one Donald J. Trump....ah, the irony, she burns.

Of Veej I Singh -  Right on cue lands this story of the seemingly dormant Vijay Singh lawsuit against the Tour involving, no laughing at our hero now, deer antler spray:

In a memorandum filed with the New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday, Vijay

Singh accused Tour officials of subjecting him to "absurd" and "unfair" treatment by ignoring the use of deer antler spray by five other professional golfers playing on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour and then lying to the public by "characterizing Singh as a cheater who caught a break."

According to Singh, discovery revealed that five golfers, identified anonymously as Golfers A, B, C, D and E, admitted to the Tour as early as 2010 or 2011 that they had used the same spray as Singh but were not sanctioned under the Tour's anti-doping program.

Stay tuned, as our Veej seems to be on a crusade.... and while he remains an obviously-unsympathetic litigant, my hope is that he provides a needed dose of disinfectant to an inappropriately opaque process.

And if Tim seems a little testy in public these days, it's even worse in private:

That accusation may not have sat well with the Commissioner. 

"As a mirror into his mentality, Commissioner Finchem under oath in discovery in this litigation was asked to explain his multiple, false and misleading public statements about the Singh matter," Ginsberg wrote. "Remarkably, Commissioner Finchem refused to respond to the questioning about whether WADA ever changed the list or why he told the world that WADA had changed the list, and, instead, stormed out of the deposition, and refused to return."

Did WADA not change its list?  Because judges typically aren't amused by parties storming out of depositions, and it's not typically done when a party thinks it has the facts and the law on its side....

Further Clarification -  We had a brief note on Hunter S, Thompson, but have received this additional clarification:

We played that first evening, in the dying light, at the municipal Aspen Golf Club, which was closed. Hunter just waved to a guy in the pro shop, who brought us a bucket of balls. Hunter had a 12-gauge shotgun in his golf bag and we had Heinekens in a cooler on the cart—also a fifth of Chivas, a fifth of Jose Cuervo, limes, a fifth of Dewar's (for George), and an extra cooler of ice. 

"Here," Hunter said, holding out three white tabs of blotter paper with an unfamiliar red symbol on them. "Eat these."

Except for the LSD, it's eerily reminiscent of my day at Muirfield.  But impinging on the Marty Hackel beat, can we agree that this isn't a great look?